Mozilla Has Decided To Develop 64-bit Firefox for Windows Anyway

About a month ago, Mozillaannounced, that the development of a 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows was being shut down. But just before Christmas it became clear that the foundation has changed its plans.

In a statement, Benjamin Smedberg, engineering manager at Mozilla, explains that there was a significant amounts of negative feedback from users that have led to that decision now being reversed.

“Most importantly, it seems that there are users who regularly run into the 4GB memory limits of 32-bit builds. These users often have hundreds or even thousands of tabs. These users are using the 64-bit nightlies not primarily to be part of our testing community, but because those builds are the best product available.”

According to Smedberg, Mozilla currently doesn’t have the resources to provide active support to these users, but the release of the nightly test versions is not a significant burden on their Release Engineering group.